


apartment hunters

by poseidon



Category: The Penumbra Podcast
Genre: Season/Series 02
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-25
Updated: 2018-12-25
Packaged: 2019-09-16 13:09:38
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,679
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16954647
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/poseidon/pseuds/poseidon
Summary: There’s someone outside of Mister Steel’s apartment.





	apartment hunters

**Author's Note:**

  * For [suludemora](https://archiveofourown.org/users/suludemora/gifts).



There’s someone outside of Mister Steel’s apartment. Rita’s pretty sure it’s not Mister Steel himself – although it could be because there was that one case they took where the guy had a thing and he could take people’s faces and, well, they did catch him and Mister Steel shot at his device or whatever like a hundred times because maybe he turned into someone he didn’t like, she has no idea, Mister Steel never tells her any of these things even when she asks very nicely and –

Oh, right, there’s someone outside of Mister Steel’s apartment, it’s probably not him, and it’s probably not his landlord because landlords have keys and this someone definitely does not have keys to –

Oh no, he’s turning around. Say, this person’s looking real familiar now. She’s almost positive she knows who he is, but she’ll need to do a quick facial scan and cross-reference it with the footage from whoever’s been at the office lately and then –

“Can I help you?” the someone asks. His voice sounds very familiar.

Rita crosses her arms. “Can _I_ help _you_?”

The someone clears his throat, standing up straight and dusting off his coat. “Well, I hope so. I’ve accidentally locked myself out of my apartment –”

“ _Your_ apartment?”

“Juno’s apartment,” he quickly corrects. He looks shifty and out of sorts, in two different ways. It actually reminds Rita of the time she broke Mister Steel’s dumb pot but when she came back to clean it up after screaming about it to Franny, who was not as helpful as she could have been, actually, considering she – Oh, wait, he’s talking again. “He’s a friend of mine –”

“Aha!” Rita points at him. “Mister Steel doesn’t _have_ any friends!” She pauses. “Well, except for Me and Mister Mercury and Agent Wire and – well, that’s not the point, the point is _you_ aren’t one of them!”

The someone gives her a long look, and then he smiles. Not even like a mean sort of smile, just a regular old smile. Honestly that freaks her out more than a mean smile would because at least with that, she would know he’s bad news and she’s gotta beat him up but this is –

“You must be Rita, then.” And before Rita can freak out about how this creep knows her name, he holds out his hand. “Juno’s told me a lot about you. I’m Peter, I’m Juno’s,” he pauses a long moment, “ex.”

It takes her a few seconds to process this information before she puts her hands to her mouth and screams. “You’re his WHAT? His _ex_? You two _dated_? Were you in _love_? I didn’t think Mister Steel believed in love ever but that was _before_ I found out he had a boyfriend.” She gasps again, eyes widening as she steps into Peter’s space. “Wait! You broke up! Why’d you break up? Was it Mister Steel? Did he break you two up? Ugh, he drives _all_ his potential friends and clients away because sometimes he’s just a mean old grouch who pushes people away because he thinks he’s not good enough for love –”

Peter sighs. “Yeah, tell me about it.”

“Okay, well, there was this one time when –”

“Actually,” he says, quickly, “I’ve been trying to reach him for a while now, but I can’t seem to get to him.”

Rita nods understandingly. “So of course you tried breaking into his apartment to see if he was in there and just doing that thing he does where he hides from everyone else because he’s busy brooding or whatever.”

“Uh, yeah. Exactly.”

“Well, lucky for you, I actually came here to go in, too.” She pushes past him and heads for the door. “I keep telling Mister Steel that he should get better security because this place is _way_ too easy to break into. I keep telling him he should get security like the Kanagawa’s which isn’t hard to get into either because I got into that like, an hour, and then Mister Steel went in and – well, I’m not supposed to say what he did but if you dated him then you know what he’s like, did he tell you about the time when he –”

“Oh, look, the door’s open.” Peter steps right past her, in kind of a rude way, really, doesn’t he know about the old saying, ‘person who broke into your ex’s house first’? He probably doesn’t, actually, something about him seems like he’s not really from around here –

“Hm,” Peter shoves his hands into his pockets and looks around, mouth pressed into a thin line – well, not a real thin line but as close as he can get it. “Doesn’t look like he’s been here in a while.”

“It’s always so depressing in here,” Rita scoffs. “I’m always telling him he needs to spruce the place up, get some light in, and then maybe he’d spend some more time in here instead of cooped up in his office all day.”

“Juno’s not really the sociable type,” Peter agrees. He stands over the coffee table, probably looking at his reflection in there. It’s like Mister Steel’s never used it in his life! “He’s more of a lovable curmudgeon type.”

“Yes!” she grins. “Curmudgeon! That’s the word! He didn’t even want to celebrate his birthday – can you _believe_ that?”

“Oh yes I can.” He starts to smile, but it fades away as he starts looking through Mister Steel’s mail. Must be a lot of ads and spam, though, because Rita’s got all his important mail forwarded to the office and no one really sends much mail anymore unless you’re really trying to get someone to buy your thing so maybe they should start sending out –

Peter drops the pile and looks over at her. “When’s the last time you saw him?”

“Oh, you know Mister Steel,” Rita shrugs, “he takes a case and then he leaves to go and solve it and doesn’t tell anyone where or why he’s gone. I was hoping maybe he’d come back already and came home to rest but...” She shakes her head to push out the negativity, turning back to Peter. “When’s the last time _you_ saw him? Did he have one eye or two?”

“One.” He doesn’t look at her when he replies, maybe because he broke up with Mister Steel because he’d lost his eye – though why would he be back if he didn’t want a one-eyed Mister Steel? Actually, it sounds a lot more like Mister Steel to push someone away because he’s only got one eye instead of two and also all his other problems that he has, she should really get him a psychiatrist or something, maybe there’s a coupon in that pile of – wait, no, focus, Peter’s looking real sad, he probably doesn’t know Mister Steel got a new eye.

“He got a new eye,” she announces. Then, after thinking about it for a bit, she frowns. “Though, well, he’s sort of changed since he got it…”

Something shifts in Peter, his lips pouting again and his brow furrowing more, it kinda looks like this one scene from a show she and Franny started watching, when there’s a really dramatic moment and the guy is putting together the pieces of the puzzle for a large grand prize.

“What eye?” he asks.

“I dunno, some fancy cybernetic eye or something,” she shrugs. “He wouldn’t tell me where he got it from or who’s paying for it – and I know he didn’t pay for it because I have access to his bank account and let me tell you, there’s no way he can pay for this apartment _and_ a fancy eye surgery, not until he started getting a lot of fancy cases with a lot of pay –”

“New cases? From who?” Peter frowns even more. If he’s not careful his face might get stuck like that.

“I don’t know, there were a lot of them, we were trying to break into the museum or something and there was a lot of yelling and –”

“Rita,” wow, did Peter just cut her off _again_ , he and Mister Steel have a _lot_ in common when it comes to how impatient they are, maybe that’s why they didn’t work out –

And then he suddenly steps into her space and puts a hand on her shoulder. “Rita,” he says again. “I need you to think very carefully and try to remember.”

Oh boy. Rita swallows hard. “Okay.”

“Juno’s new eye, was it a THEIA Soul?”

Okay, well, that sounds kinda familiar? Maybe she heard about it somewhere recently? Maybe when she tried hacking into Mister Steel’s eye and see what he was seeing? Did she try doing that? That sounds like something she would do – no, no, focus, Rita, do you or do you not know what model his eye is?

“I think so?” she finally says.

“You think?”

“Yes?”

There’s a short pause where he just looks at her, and then suddenly his face stops looking so harsh and he steps back. He smiles. “Oh, dear, it seems as though I’m late to an appointment. But we should get together again sometime soon, just us gals.” He pats her arm and before she can even react, he’s already running for the door.

Wow, he really is just like Mister Steel, always running around to places and doing things and leaving her behind with no explanation. Not that she should get involved in their relationship problems, but _man_ do they need to sit down together and talk instead of running away. For his new eye, Mister Steel is really bad at seeing how other people feel.

Say, what did that guy Peter just say about his cyber-eye – the THEIA something? Something smells fishy about that… whatever that is.

Rita grins and rubs her hands together. All right, a new case for the Rita Detective Agency. Maybe she can get a raise out of this one. Well, that’ll have to wait until after she finds Mister Steel and gives him a piece of her mind.


End file.
